edited by Ted Widmer ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 14, 2013
American history meets the “snap, crackle and pop of lively online writing” in this outstanding serialization.
Widmer, a Brown University historian, is joined by New York Times op-ed staff editors Risen and Kalogerakis in the masterful compilation of more than 100 short essays based on the award-winning Times Disunion blog (begun in 2010), which chronologically traces and reconsiders the War between the States, an event he believes still remains “a ghostly presence in American life.”
The collection sequentially launches with the secession crisis and moves through the Emancipation Proclamation, and the offerings are wonderfully multifarious. History scholar Louis Masur’s insightful essay factors Lincoln’s presidential election into the fray as deftly as Susan Schulten ably explores the war from a geographical perspective. War historian Adam Goodheart’s contributions are consistent standouts and include a rich sketch of Harriet Tubman and pensive words about slaves at Christmastime. William Freehling considers the secession’s impact through Confederate Gen. George Wythe Randolph’s eyes, journalist Cate Lineberry offers an outstanding profile of Confederate spy Rose Greenhow and a jarring piece on juvenile soldiers, and military historian C. Kay Larson provides an article on the oft-overlooked presence of female wartime volunteers. Uniform in tone and thought-provoking content, the articles are supplemented by actual diary entries, artifact images, letters, pertinent cartography, photographs and poetry. The mood of the era is captured best through Carole Emberton’s harrowingly detailed commentary on the scourge of war-borne smallpox, Terry L. Jones’ deliberation on black militiamen and Widmer’s own examination of Lincoln’s portraiture, carefully manipulated “to give the Union a face—his own.” Each of the assembled scholars, historians, academics and journalists crafts unique insights and viewpoints and through their collective dialogue, artistically contemplates the heft and enduring relevance of the Civil War.
American history meets the “snap, crackle and pop of lively online writing” in this outstanding serialization.Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-57912-928-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Black Dog & Leventhal
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2013
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by Tom Clavin ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 21, 2020
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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by Bonnie Tsui ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 14, 2020
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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